


Hazard Label

by booksong



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Aki is a shy sweet dork, F/M, Firsts, Getting Together, Saeko is a queen, late night practice sessions, rated T for Tanaka Saeko's language, secret motives, they somehow make it work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-10
Updated: 2016-03-10
Packaged: 2018-05-25 22:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6211826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksong/pseuds/booksong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In retrospect, her using his little brother in a conversation opener hadn’t really been fair."</p><p>(In which there are: two people who love their little brothers a whole lot, questionable breaking and entering, volleyball lessons with a secret agenda, some skepticism from those very same little brothers, and a 'next time'.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hazard Label

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissMairin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMairin/gifts).



> For [centimentally](http://centimentally.tumblr.com/)/[MissMairin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMairin), for the Haikyuu!! Rarepair Exchange 2016! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I did writing it for you. ^^

Tsukishima Akiteru felt a little like a criminal.

The Karasuno grounds were dark and silent, and the soft clicks and creaks of his bike chain as he locked it sounded ridiculously loud to his ears. He half-expected a janitor or some school official who’d stayed late to come around the corner of the lot and catch him at any minute. But when he straightened up there was no sound, and nothing else around, save for the large, white, crookedly-parked van that he’d locked his bike beside.

It was a brisk walk past several administration buildings and the baseball field to the main gym. It was cooler than he’d thought it would be, and goosebumps were rapidly coming up on his arms and legs. He hadn’t bothered to wear a jacket, thinking that the exercise he was about to engage in would warm him up quick enough, but that didn’t exactly help now. 

It was strange, almost a little eerie, being back on Karasuno property in the dark. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d been back here since graduation, and none of them had been night visits. He was trying to walk quickly and quietly, but the soft slap of his sneakers on the cement sounded almost as loud in the complete silence as his bike chain had.

The moment the gym was in sight, he felt a little flutter of relief when he saw that the lights were already on; a lower setting, it looked like, the glow from the row of windows more orange than yellow in the dark. Trying not to trumpet their clearly-after-hours presence.

The sliding door was ajar the tiniest crack, just enough to prove that it was unlocked and waiting. Akiteru took one more quick scan around, still feeling a little… _illicit_ , and then snuck up the steps and slid the door open enough to squeeze inside. 

The low lights helped his eyes adjust quicker than the usual blinding white ones, so he saw her right away.

Tanaka Saeko was rolling a volleyball idly between her palms, leaning one elbow on a cart full of them she must have rolled out from the equipment room. She looked so relaxed, standing in a partially lit gym at nine o’clock at night, like they were totally not technically breaking and entering on school property by being here. Not for the first time, Akiteru wondered how much experience with this sort of thing Saeko _had_. He’d just made the initial offer, when she’d told him what she wanted, but she had been the one that had chosen this place and this time. 

She looked up at the soft rattle of the door, face breaking into a grin when she saw him.

“Yo, you made it!” She didn’t exactly shout, but she didn’t make any effort to lower her voice, and the words echoed against the gym’s high ceiling, making him wince a little in spite of himself. 

Still, this feeling of being waited for, _welcomed_ , to a place that held so many memories but in such a different context…he still felt nervous, but it was a different kind of nervous, now.

When he replied, Akiteru made a conscious effort to match the careless volume of her voice. 

“Yeah. I made it.”

***

In retrospect, her using his little brother in a conversation opener hadn’t really been fair. 

“Yo, Akiteru-kun, wait up!”

She’d called out to him right after the Shiratorizawa game, forcing him to put aside the secondhand euphoria that was filling him up and actually pay attention. He’d slowed in the corridor, pressing against the wall so they wouldn’t be run over by the mob of spectators leaving the arena. 

Saeko’s face had been as bright as he expected his own probably was, eyes glowing with shared pride, even though neither of them had actually set foot on the court. Around them, the crowd hummed with amazement and disbelief at the match’s outcome.

Akiteru had wanted to shout to them that he’d known it all along, of course he had. 

“Got something to ask you. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but I made up my mind today, watching them. And watching you cheer for your little brother.” Saeko had leaned up beside him with an easy, practiced movement, one leg bent against the wall. He had been reminded immediately and irresistibly of her as he had glimpsed her in back in high school; her stride down the corridors confident, her uniform deliberately mussed, her strident laugh unmistakable even when she wasn’t in sight. Effortlessly cool. He’d never expected to run into her cheering for his brother’s volleyball team, but he couldn’t forget the flash of kinship he’d felt when he’d realized they were there for essentially the same reason.

“Uh, sure. What’s up?”

“I want to play volleyball.”

“You want…on an actual team?” Akiteru had been surprised, but kind of pleased. In fairness, he couldn’t imagine someone watching the game they just had and _not_ coming away with some kind of desire to get involved in the sport. “Well sure, I guess I could ask my association if their girls’ team has openings, they’d probably—”

“Nah, not with an association. It doesn’t have to be anything that organized. It’s more…I just wanna be able to help Ryuu practice when I can, y’know? Spikes, receiving, the basic stuff.”

“Oh.” He had been stuck by a sudden and painfully clear memory of Kei’s face across the backyard, set into a focused scowl, arms out and skinny wrists together for a receive. So many afternoons, so many weekends. Today had gone a long way toward soothing that sting, but it was still there. 

“Yeah, and since I heard from Ryuu that Kei-kun got into volleyball because of you, and because I know you used to be on the Karasuno team, I figured you’d be a good person to ask. How ‘bout it?” Her manner had been so casual, but the way the glow hadn’t faded from her eyes said that she really meant this, that it was important to her.

“I…I haven’t coached anyone in a really long time.” _Kei holding up two fingers in a victory sign. Kei’s shuttered eyes behind his glasses._

“That’s okay, I’m not looking to be great or anything.” She’d turned her body against the wall so she was facing him, and he found himself changing his stance unconsciously to mirror hers. “But if they can beat Shiratorizawa like that, I want Ryuu to get all the extra practice he wants. Yuu too.” 

It was the look of faraway, sisterly fondness in her eyes that had convinced him. And he’d realized it made him happy, relieved almost, to see a love that didn’t have the trace of sadness in it that his still did.

“Okay. Sure. I’ll teach you the basics. Uh, but where would you like to…?”

“Oh, let’s make it easy on ourselves. We both know where the Karasuno gym is, yeah?”

That had sent him into brief panic. “Okay, wait, I’d rather not do it with everyone there—” _With Kei there._

“Neither would I, are you kidding?” Saeko laughed. “I can’t have Ryuu laughing at me when I screw up! Besides, I want it to be a surprise for him. But we could use it later in the evening, after everyone’s gone.”

When he’d expressed hesitation for both the late hour she’d suggested and using a building on school property after-hours, she’d patted his arm confidently and promised she’d take care of everything. All he had to do was show up, the following Tuesday, at the Karasuno gym.

He wasn’t sure what it had said about him that he’d found himself believing her. 

***

And now here they were.

“So, um, Tanaka-san—”

“Okay wait, maybe I’ve been around my brother’s friends too much lately, but whenever anyone says ‘Tanaka-san’ I feel like they’re talking to him.” Saeko chuckled. “Just go with Saeko, yeah? It doesn’t bother me, I’ve already told like half the Karasuno team to call me ‘nee-san’ anyway.”

“S-Saeko-san.” Maybe it was her laid back demeanor, but it didn’t feel quite as awkward and intimate as he’d feared. “Then, uh, you can call me Akiteru.”

“Sure.” The offhanded way Saeko said this told him she had probably planned on calling him that anyway (she already had been, now that he thought about it), but he felt like he should reciprocate out of politeness. 

“So, uh… _how_ did you get in here, again? You didn’t actually, um, pick the locks or anything, right?” He was trying to think of a way to say he didn’t have an arrest record and really didn’t want one without seeming uncool, especially since she seemed so calm about it.

Saeko put a conspiratorial finger to her lips. “I have my ways. Don’t worry, as long as we don’t make too much noise, no one will bother coming around this time of night.”

She scooped a second volleyball out of the cart and tossed it to him. “How would you like to start? You’re in charge.”

Akiteru couldn’t imagine anyone being in charge of Tanaka Saeko, but he cleared his throat and said, “Here, I’ll show you how to toss a ball up for someone to practice spiking, since Tana—your brother is a wing spiker.”

This was probably the easiest possible thing to teach, and it had the added bonus of helping him feel his way back into the role of teacher. It hadn’t been his humility speaking, earlier; it really did feel like forever since he’d coached anyone one-on-one like this.

The gym felt much too big for the two of them, but it also didn’t feel that strange to be alone with her. Maybe because she was taking the entire thing so much in stride, but as long as he didn’t look out the darkened windows, he could pretend he was back in a late afternoon practice session with one of his teammates.

Who was a girl. Honestly probably closer to a woman.

He felt underdressed next to her, which was ridiculous because they were basically wearing the same thing, loose track shorts and worn t-shirts. Saeko just somehow made the whole ensemble look better, though Akiteru supposed he might be biased, just a little. He thought again of the contrast her blocky white van had made, towering over his trim little bicycle in the parking lot, almost comical. 

It also might have simply been the way she carried herself. Saeko was not a large person by any standard, but he discovered very quickly that the space not taken up by her body was filled with the confident, ceaseless force of her personality.

With all that taken into account, he’d half-expected a little bit of teasing and pushback from her, but she seemed to be taking him completely seriously, which was a relief. She did whatever he asked without complaining, even when the tossing got a bit repetitive, and she followed his suggestions easily and without taking offense. 

She picked up the monotonous practice tossing rhythm quickly; in just a few minutes she could send rough tosses to a couple different heights as well as closer and further from the net.

“Great. This is a big part of spiking practice, honestly; just having someone send various tosses, over and over, so the spiker gets a range of balls to hit.”

He kept her at that for a little longer, and then changed to receives. He remembered the way he used to switch gears like this often when Kei had been little, his attention span still too short to want to drill endlessly on a single skill. He figured a beginner like Saeko might feel kind of the same way.

“Doing these is helpful if you’re helping more than one person practice. If you can do a decent receive off of someone’s spike, it gives the other person a chance to practice hitting it the way they would if someone on their team received it and sent it back up.”

He hit gentle spikes, really more like forceful tosses, across the net for her to receive. Her form was awkward, but she moved fast, darting from one side of the court to the other to go for balls that came down in unexpected places. And she wasn’t afraid to dive, either; he found himself saying weakly, “Saeko-san, remember, you’re not wearing pads,” and hoping he didn’t sound too much the mother hen.

But of all the skills he could start her on in a single evening, he should have known that Saeko would take to spiking the best.

“I’ve been wanting to do this ever since the first time I saw one of Ryuu’s games,” she told him, rolling the ball between her hands as if she was already envisioning slamming it over the net. “And all those other guys with the powerhouse spikes that just… _BAM!_ It’s seriously the coolest-looking position. No offense to you middle-blockers.” 

He found himself smiling at that. “That’s just Kei, actually; when I played for Karasuno I was a wing spiker too.”

“Aha, knew there was a reason I liked you!” Saeko slapped his back, and despite the sting, he felt his heart skip. “So, show me how we do this, wing spiker. I’ll give you the toss.” She went over beside the net, taking the stance he’d shown her.

He felt like she was giving him permission to show off a little, so that was what he did. It felt good to do what he knew, what was second nature by now to him.

He approached the net at a slow, measured tempo so Saeko had plenty of time to make the toss. When he saw it go up he altered his stride accordingly, keeping his eye on the arc of it, the point where it would hit its peak…

His form was a little off, but his jump was plenty high enough to reach her toss. He hit the ball with his palm dead center, and it struck the back left of the court with a hard, satisfying thud.

He flexed his fingers over his stinging palm, taking a moment to breathe in the clean, uncomplicated moment that followed a successful spike. Saeko’s whoop and applause startled him, and he almost reminded her to watch how much noise she made in case anyone was still on the grounds…but it was nice. He hadn’t exactly been short on opportunities to spike; he still played with his association whenever he could. But he hadn’t realized how much he missed the _reaction_ that was supposed to come after that adrenaline surge, the shouts of your teammates, the distant thunder of a crowd if you were lucky.

Akiteru did not allow himself to dwell often on how little he’d gotten to experience that in high school.

“Damn, you’re pretty good!” Saeko exclaimed, jogging back to him to grab his spiking hand. She inspected his reddened palm and fingers with interest. “Does it hurt?”

“Not really…you get used to it. Lots of spikers actually like the feeling.” He also kind of liked the feeling of her smaller hand folded confidently around his, but he didn’t say that aloud.

“Well, I’m sold.” She got a new ball out of the cart and balanced it in the palm of one hand. “My turn.”

Her first few tries went as well as could be expected; her timing was off, and she would jump too earlier or too late to meet the ball properly. Her form when she jumped was rough but oddly fascinating; she came almost to a full stop right before the net before concentrating all her leg strength into an almost bouncy leap that brought her to a fairly impressive height, despite her shorter stature. He considered correcting it for her at first, but decided against it. It wasn’t a bad form, after all, and it seemed to be doing the job for her well enough.

It was incredibly impressive, though, how quickly she zeroed in on the ball. Often she was still in midair when she called out, “Again!” She only paused long enough to wipe sweat from her forehead with one forearm and listen to whatever brief advice he gave—jump sooner, keep watching the ball, start your swing earlier—before she would take another try at it. But where most people would have to keep this kind of ceaseless practice up for days, if not weeks, Saeko was already getting very close to making a true, solid spike.

He hadn’t come here expecting anything tonight, and somehow he’d come up with a near-perfect student. Tanaka Saeko was apparently full of surprises.

He wondered if the Karasuno girls’ volleyball team knew they’d missed out on recruiting someone like her.

He was glad that they were both sweating by this point, and maybe he could hope that she would think his periodic swallowing was due to a throat dry from exertion, and not as a result of watching her legs when she spiked.

She finally connected with a low toss, catching it more with the heel of her palm than properly in the center, but it was contact. Saeko shouted in triumph, and he couldn’t stop himself from giving her an impressed round of applause.

“You…you pick this up really fast.” It was kind of embarrassing when he realized one of the myriad emotions swirling through his mind might just be a touch of jealousy. He covered it by joking, “Do you watch all the Karasuno game recordings or something? Been getting in some secret practice you didn’t mention?”

Saeko didn’t respond to that right away, which surprised him; he’d expected her to laugh and toss out some offhanded retort about ‘being a natural’ or ‘the Tanaka genes.’ When she didn’t, he looked over and saw that she was staring very intently at the volleyball in her hands as if looking for the answer to a question. It was slightly unnerving; Saeko was not the kind of person who stayed still, silent, or expressionless for long. 

When the silence between them started to make the gym feel too small instead of too big, he tried an uncertain, “Saeko…san?”

And just like that, her toothy grin was back, though there was something just a little off about it. “Secret practice,” she echoed softly, almost to herself, pulling up the collar of her t-shirt to wipe some sweat off her neck. Akiteru forced himself not to look at the smooth curve of waist and hip the movement revealed. 

“Sorry, Akiteru-kun, kinda spaced out there. But it’s getting late, and...well, I guess I should show you something before we call it a night.”

“Okay?” He had _just_ been starting to get the hang of this situation, too, of being around her and feeling comfortable talking to her, and now he was all off-balance again. “Um…should I—?”

In answer, Saeko simply handed him the volleyball and said, “All you have to do is toss to me, Akiteru-kun. One more.” Then she walked out towards the center of the court. He saw that her shoulders were squared now, like she was walking into some kind of battle.

Beyond confused now, he did as she asked more by muscle memory than anything else. Go to the pole. Ball balanced between palms and fingers. Nothing fancy or carefully timed, just an ordinary mid-height toss, up and out.

Saeko crossed the distance to the net in two long, low strides before popping up in that concentrated little spring, putting all her coiled leg and thigh muscles into it. The whole motion silk smooth, her eyes never leaving the ball, her arm forming a neat, tight arc as she swung and struck the ball dead on.

The spike was nothing compared to the powerhouse ones he’d seen so many times from the bleachers, not even compared to her own little brother’s, but it was more focused and powerful than anything he’d seen her use thus far. And there was nothing anymore in that form that said ‘first time on a volleyball court.’ 

No one learned _that_ fast.

He stared at her as the ball slammed down on the opposite side with no one to receive it, joining the others scattered haphazardly around. “You—you can—you aren’t actually—?” 

Saeko pushed her bangs back, letting out a long breath that didn’t sound like it was all exertion. Her grin definitely looked a little forced, suddenly, and she wasn’t quite meeting his eyes.

“Yeah. Truth is, I’ve, uh, kinda been practicing with Ryuu and Yuu for more than a year now. They asked me to help out back when those other second-years took off for a while, and I enjoyed it. And just…kept going with it. So I’m pretty decent, now, at least for someone who’s never actually played.”

He should have known. 

Of course this wasn’t her first time on the court. Of course he wasn’t that good a teacher, any more than anyone could be that quick of a student to a sport that demanded so much practice. 

Of _course_ someone who clearly loved their little brother as much as she did had already been helping however she could for a long time.

After all, he had been there, once.

“Then if you’re…then why am I even here? Why bother asking me?” It came out harsher than he’d intended, but there was a hot little needle of hurt in his chest now, wondering if this was some kind of prank after all. Or worse, if she’d done it out of pity, some misguided attempt to help him relive old times. Had she guessed how much it had meant to him when he’d coached Kei years ago?

Saeko frowned briefly, looking confused at his change in tone, and then surprised him by grinning, much less fragile this time. “Man, you really don’t know you’re cute, do you? I bet your little brother is the same way.”

Akiteru blinked. Saeko’s grin widened.

“Yeah. Even when you stopped being a starter for the volleyball team, a bunch of the girls in my year always used to swoon over you.” Saeko looked as if this amused her greatly, then and now. The muted sting Akiteru felt from her casual reminder of his fallen status on the team was drowned under the reality that Tanaka Saeko was currently using words like ‘cute’ and ‘swoon’ in reference to _him_. 

“…but _you_ didn’t?” He was still trying to figure out if she was complimenting him or not.

Saeko snorted. “Do I look to you like the kind of girl who swoons over anything?”

_No_ , Akiteru wanted to reply, remembering his image of her from high school, remembering all the times he’d done a double-take passing her in the corridors without realizing he was doing it. _You’re the kind of girl that makes other people do the looking._

No way was he going to say that out loud though.

But Saeko was already continuing. “I thought it was really sweet when you showed up to watch your little brother, though. I didn’t make that part up when I asked you here; anyone who loves their little bro that much, and isn’t afraid to embarrass themselves showing it, is pretty great in my book.” She gave him a startlingly fond look, and he felt his ears go hot. He shrugged, keeping his shoulders high as if that would help hide the blush. 

“Someone’s got to be there for him.”

Saeko laughed, softer and somehow warmer than her usual cackle. “See, you’re doing it again, right now.”

“Doing what?”

Instead of answering directly, Saeko picked up a wayward ball and started tossing it up a foot or two and catching it one-handed. On most people it would have looked like a nervous tic, but since when had he ever seen her nervous?

But she was definitely looking at the ball and not him when she said, “You know, when Kei-kun blocked Ushijima’s spike that first time, I thought you were going to fall over the railing. I was seriously preparing to grab your jacket and save your life.” She was smiling now, small and thoughtful, and he couldn’t help noticing how pretty it made her look—different from the fierce, intimidating beauty he had become used to.

“And the first thing I thought, after I was sure you weren’t going to die, was that I really, really wanted to kiss you.”

Akiteru had gotten distracted by Saeko using the words ‘cute’ and ‘swoon’ in the same sentence with his name earlier, so his mind had no chance against ‘kiss.’ 

All he could think to do was ask, almost desperately, “Saeko-san…why… _why exactly am I here?_ ”

“Because,” she said, and he got the sense she was watching him very closely behind her smile to see what entertaining thing his face might do when she finished the sentence. “I thought you might freak out a little if I just asked you out without any kind of lead up.”

It took a moment for all the little pieces to sort themselves into any kind of picture that made sense. “Ask me…wait, was this a _date_?”

“Sorry, it’s not the usual kind of first date, huh?” Saeko shrugged. She looked less tense, now, as if revealing her true intentions had stripped away that uncharacteristic nervousness. “But I figured it’s what we have in common, at least that I know of. Volleyball, our little bros, and everything that comes with both.” She looked him very deliberately in the eyes when she said this last bit, and in a flash he wondered if maybe, someday, he could tell her the truth about what had happened with Kei. He wondered if maybe she would understand in a way no one else he knew ever could. He wondered if maybe she’d even guessed already. Clearly, she was a lot shrewder than anyone had given her credit for.

He wondered what else they might discover they had in common, given time.

“You can be mad if you want; guess I can’t blame you.” Saeko started collecting the balls, as if the revelation signaled the end of their session. Akiteru supposed it did; it must be getting very late now, and there was no point in teaching Saeko things she clearly already knew. Almost mechanically, he started helping her gather the volleyballs.

“I’m not mad,” he said into the now much less uncomfortable silence a few moments later. It was true; he felt like he _could_ have been angry about this, about how easily she’d drawn him out here under false pretenses, but he wasn’t. It was kind of… _flattering_ , really, that she’d gone to all this trouble, thought this all through. That she’d guessed he would have been completely blindsided by a blunt proposition and taken steps to make him comfortable, doing something familiar in a familiar place. And that she hadn’t let him go home without telling him the truth to his face. “I mean I…you’re pretty great too.” He kind of wanted to slap himself, but Saeko hummed happily as if he’d just paid her a great compliment, so maybe it was okay. “I guess I’m more just…surprised. That you would ask me.” _Of all people._

“Well, we already covered that you don’t know how cute you are.” Saeko winked at him. It was such a relief to have this Saeko back, all traces of tension gone from her face. “And now that I popped the big question, we can go wherever you want with…this.” She waved a hand that seemed to encompass him, the gym, even the volleyball she lobbed neatly into the cart. Then she gave him a gentle (for her, anyway) punch in the arm. “I’m serious; I didn’t ask you here to pressure you, I just thought it would be fun to try hanging out with you somewhere that isn’t—”

“A volleyball court?” It was dry and a little snarky and oh god he sounded like Kei. But Saeko smacked the rim of the volleyball cart and gave a shout of delight.

“ _Fine_ , okay you win, God, I’m totally unoriginal. Go ahead, rub it in.”

The rest of their cleanup was accompanied by banter, Akiteru finding it easier and easier to say things teasingly or bluntly without worrying she would get offended or annoyed. Saeko laughed easily, at him and at herself almost equally, her reactions varied but always amusing and somehow reassuring. At some point, without even quite knowing how it happened, Akiteru found himself exchanging numbers and mail addresses with her.

It was almost startling when he slid aside the gym door and was met by pitch darkness and biting cold. He fought the urge to wrap his arms around himself and regretted once again that he hadn’t even thought to throw a jacket on over his t-shirt. The drying sweat on his skin felt like it was freezing onto him in patches.

Saeko only hissed, “ _Shit_ it’s cold,” before pulling the door shut tight behind her and then locking it with a tiny key she produced from who knew where. 

Their walk back across the grounds to the parking lot was more of a jog. Akiteru debated briefly about whether it might be proper or welcome if he tried to hold her hand, but they were walking a little too quickly for that, and their hands were probably equally cold at this point, so it might be uncomfortable.

So instead he found himself swinging a leg over his bike a few moments later after fumbling with the icy metal of his bike lock, and wondering whether he was supposed to say ‘thank you’ or ‘call me’ or ‘I had fun’ or some combination of the three.

That is, until Saeko paused in the act of unlocking her van, as if something had just occurred to her. “Oh, y’know, if you don’t want our date to be volleyball next time, that’s cool too. You can pick if you want.”

“ _N-next time?_ ” Akiteru nearly fell off his bike, which would have been enormously mortifying since he wasn’t actually moving yet.

“Well, see, I didn’t actually mean for this to be a one-time thing,” Saeko said casually, folding her arms and leaning against the side of her van. He got the sense, as he had multiple times throughout the evening, that she was enjoying doing this to him, always shaking the ground underneath him just a little. “We can do the usual stuff like dinner, movies, whatever. Or if you’re up for traveling a little further we could hit the beach or something. Oh, or I hear they have _great_ paintball places in Tokyo. Always thought that looked like a blast.” 

Akiteru was still trying to process the implications of _this_ time. 

But this time had been _fun_ , even if his original goal had ended up being pointless. Although…

He remembered how flattered he’d been back when she’d first asked him, the way his heart had picked up when she’d turned to look at him in the corridor and told him she just wanted to be there for the little brother she believed in, the magnetism of her body and her laugh and her oddly graceful, springing serves in the gym.

Maybe his original goal hadn’t been quite as clear-cut as he’d fooled himself into thinking.

“But that’s if _you’re_ on board with there being a next time.” Her grin had faded a little, and she was squinting at him a little in the dark, as if trying to puzzle out the nuances of his expression. It occurred to him that she, Tanaka Saeko, suddenly looked a tiny bit uncertain.

“ _Yes._ ” The word came readily and without a stammer to his tongue, and that was how Akiteru knew it was true. His apparently semi-offline brain then found it necessary to follow that up with, “Next time, yes, oh _absolutely_ yes.” 

It was enough to bring back her grin. “Cool. I’ll call you. Or you can call me, whatever.” She waved a careless hand.

“Yeah. Sounds good.” Akiteru flipped the kickstand up and allowed himself one last look at her, trying to take in everything that had happened, everything that had shifted in the last few minutes.

“And, y’know, thanks for the coaching.” Saeko winked, seemed to hesitate for the briefest moment…and then raised her hand in a small, casual wave.

It felt almost painfully forced, but Akiteru made himself smile and do the same, feeling something sink inside him.

_Time to go home, I guess._

His feet caught the pedals and he pushed himself forward a meter or two…

And he stopped.

Later, Akiteru still wasn’t quite sure he made the decision _consciously_ , but he made it in an instant.

He flipped his kickstand back down with his foot and swung off the bike, the smooth confidence of the movement feeling like it belonged to someone else. But there was resolve there now, and it made him feel oddly fearless. 

Maybe it was remembering what she’d said earlier, about why she’d gone through all this trouble in the first place. Maybe the late hour and his physical exhaustion were making him a little giddy, or maybe it was simply an extension of his thoughts being off-balance from Saeko constantly surprising him. Maybe it was just _her_. But he suddenly knew exactly what he wanted to say, what he wanted to do.

Saeko paused with her hand on the door of her van and raised her eyebrows bemusedly as he settled the bike upright carefully and strode back over to her. “What’s wrong? You forget something?”

“Saeko-san, this was a date, right?” His palms prickled with sweat and he thought distantly, _Ah, there’s my sane self._

“Yeah? Thought we covered that.” Saeko gave him an echo of the grin she’d worn when she’d first sprung the news, as if remembering the moment fondly.

“Then I think I should end it properly. Can I—can I kiss you?”

It was a very near thing that his voice didn’t crack, but the look on Saeko’s face made everything, absolutely _everything_ , feel worth it.

He hadn’t exactly known her for very long, but Akiteru still felt like he was witnessing something rare and precious and delightful: Tanaka Saeko at a complete loss for words. She blinked, the dark makeup around her eyes making it look even more owlish, opened her mouth briefly, and then closed it.

Under the fuzzy light of the parking lot lamp, he could tell she was actually _blushing_ , and it made his chest flutter with a kind of wild, terrified triumph. _He_ had made her blush.

She didn’t stay speechless for long though, though what she finally said was just four short words.

“Hell _yes_ you can.”

It wasn’t exactly a sweet kiss under snow-covered trees or in front of fireworks or beside a front door before parting. It was cold and probably almost midnight, they were both still sweaty and dressed in worn sportswear, and certainly both of them had looked and smelled better than they currently did.

But Saeko kissed exactly like he’d somehow expected her to, unselfconsciously and with intent, but also with care. He wasn’t sure if she was being gentle with him on purpose or if this was just a more secret part of her, but he knew he wanted to find out. Her hand was small but strong on the side of his neck, trailing slowly but with firm, mesmerizing pressure down to his shoulder, and that was her in a nutshell: small and strong.

He leaned after her mouth a little when she finally pulled back, and she made an approving sound and kissed his nose playfully. “G’night,” she murmured, and this definitely felt _much_ better than parting with awkward waves.

He watched, mind still a little hazy, as she climbed up into the driver’s seat of her van and closed the door, started the engine. She looked thoughtfully down from the open window, licked her lips briefly, and then pointed at him with one finger. “I’ll call you,” she said with finality. “Tomorrow.”

Akiteru had no doubt she would, although ‘tomorrow’ was probably already ‘today’, and he couldn’t imagine sleeping anytime soon.

He tried to think of something else smooth to say, to see her off. What came out was, “Um, drive safe.”

Saeko threw her head back and laughed, honest and loud, the sound echoing in the deserted parking lot. Then she gave him that fiercely fond look again. “You too, Aki-kun. You too.”

She gunned her engine and peeled out of the parking lot before he’d even processed this new development in her familiarity with his given name. But that was fine.

He had the entire bike ride home to replay it.

***

As Saeko passed the first door in the upstairs hallway, propped slightly ajar, the least subtle stage whisper possible hissed out of it, “ _Yo! Nee-san!_ ” She rolled her eyes, but she’d been expecting it. She nudged the door open wider, revealing Ryuu with his chin propped on his knuckles, his computer screen casting his face in its glow. As soon as he saw her, his mouth curled up in a wicked grin. “So? _How’d it go?_ ” He tried to do something with his eyebrows that looked completely ridiculous, and she once again despaired at the fact that her little brother, precious as he was, might never be _smooth_. 

“Isn’t it past your bedtime?” Saeko shot back, folding her arms over the chest. 

“C’mon, you’re stal-ling~” Ryuu singsonged quietly, pulling off his headphones and turning to face her completely. “We deserve to know the outcome of your mission, Nee-san. We’re your _partners-in-crime_.” 

“We?” Just then, the guest futon on the floor beside Ryuu’s bed that she hadn’t noticed in the shadows of the room rustled, and a dark head with a light streak highlighted by the computer glow popped out of the blanket mound. 

“Izzat Ane-san?” said a sleep-fuzzed but unmistakable voice. “Wha’ the hell Ryuu, you were s’posed to tell me when she got back.” 

“It was just now, dude,” Ryuu reassured him. “No juicy details yet.” 

“Seriously? You actually had Yuu _sleep over_ for this?” Saeko didn’t know whether to feel exasperated or fond. 

“S’important,” Yuu yawned. “So? Was it a success? Is he as uptight as our Tsukishima? Does he do that annoying thing where he looks down at you like he’s better than you are? Is he any good at volleyball? Did he pass out when you told him it was a date? I have money on that with Ryuu, y’know.”

“I don’t really know Kei off the court, but this Tsukishima-san’s definitely not uptight. He’s not the type to really look down at _anyone_ very effectively. He’s good at volleyball, and he didn’t pass out.” Yuu grunted in disappointment and her brother clapped his hands together triumphantly. Saeko had to carefully maintain her casual scowl; she could feel fondness threatening to make itself known in her expression. “And there _are_ no ‘juicy details’, ya knuckleheads. This was just testing things out, okay? Anyway, so far things seem pretty damn good, so if you need to put a name on it to make yourselves feel better, you can call it a success.” 

Yuu and Ryuu both regarded her skeptically, as if by looking intensely enough, a more exciting or scandalous summary of the ‘mission’ would spontaneously reveal itself. Then Yuu broke the stare-off with another huge yawn. “Well…just promise if you guys decide to get married later, you’ll tell us first; I need to be there when Tsukishima finds out.”

“ _Whoa_ there Yuu, you don’t think you’re starting on the next mission just a little fast? Psh, _get married_ , you’ve gotta be kidding me.” She kept her tone light and joking, but Saeko was glad of the room’s darkness now, because she was remembering the way Akiteru had said, _‘Next time, yes, oh absolutely yes’_ , all breathless and hopeful, and realizing she couldn’t currently imagine not wanting to hear him saying that, not wanting there to be a next time.

Couldn’t really imagine not wanting him to kiss her again either.

Apparently the room wasn’t quite dark _enough_. “Ooohh, is Nee-san secretly hiding a shy, blushing maiden under it all?” Ryuu said in his best girl-falsetto imitation, batting his eyelashes. Over on the futon Yuu made a sound halfway between a squawk of outrage and a bark of laughter, quickly smothered in his pillow. 

“A shy, blushing maiden that’ll kick your ass into next week if you don’t go to bed like a good baby brother. It’s a school night,” Saeko shot back. It was difficult to summon up anything like her usual snap when she still felt light and uncharacteristically fuzzy all over though. Remembering Akiteru’s voice had apparently been the signal for her brain to start replaying the entire night’s events without her permission. “ _I’m_ going to bed; maybe if I feel like it, I’ll tell you two nerds the whole story tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you forgetting one more thing?” Ryuu’s sly voice stopped her as she turned to continue on to her own room, more than ready by now to slip out of sweaty clothes. 

Saeko clicked her tongue as if in annoyance, but she knew if Ryuu could see her blush in the dim room then he could certainly see her little smile. She fished the gym key on its ring out of her shorts’ pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it and spun it around his finger with a satisfied flourish. 

“Don’t tell Daichi or Suga I loaned it you. It’s my only copy, and if they take it back I can’t be a good senpai and let my underclassman sneak into the gym for illicit practice sessions. Or my sister.” Ryuu shot her a pointed look as he slipped the key back into his schoolbag.

“You’re so cool, Ryuu,” mumbled Yuu from the futon, sounding like was starting to fall asleep again in the absence of any exciting news. 

Privately, Saeko agreed with him completely. “Don’t worry, my lips are sealed. Not like I want to get in trouble with your captain either, that guy’s scary when’s he’s mad.” Then, on complete impulse, she took two steps back into the room, leaned over, and kissed her brother quickly on the top of his shaved head. 

“Go to sleep, idiot,” she shot over her shoulder, grinning to herself at Ryuu’s sputters of “ _Gross_ , Nee-san, is dating going to make you all gooey and uncool?” that followed her out the door and down the hall.

***

Kei’s eyes behind his square-framed glasses had no right to _judge_ him so, Akiteru thought, as the weight of his little brother’s gaze and nothing more forced him to pause passing the doorway to his room.

“You’re back late.” Kei even said it as a casual observation, not an accusation, and it _still_ felt unfairly searching. 

“Ahaha, I was out…taking a walk?” Akiteru tugged the sweat-stiff collar of his T-shirt away from his neck nervously. He was absolutely sure that his awkward laugh and the way that had accidentally come out as a question did nothing to divert Kei’s suspicions. 

“I see.” 

Kei turned a page of his textbook with great deliberation, the tinny sound of whatever was playing from the headphones around his neck filling up the ensuing silence.

When Akiteru realized his brother wasn’t even going to _try_ to pursue the matter further, he couldn’t stop himself from blurting in one breath, “Actually-I-wasn’t-taking-a-walk-I-was-teaching-Saeko-san-volleyball-in-the-Karasuno-gym-but-it-turned-out-it-was-actually-a- _date_.” 

He didn’t realize until he spoke how much he’d needed to _tell_ someone, as if that would validate that the entire strange, incredible night had been real.

Kei looked up from his book slowly, a very slight widening on his eyes and twitch of his mouth his only reaction. If Akiteru hadn’t been able to read him so well (a fact he was fiercely proud of), he probably wouldn’t have noticed a change at all.

“ _Tanaka_ Saeko? The one related to my senpai? The one who Hinata said nearly killed him and Kageyama bringing them to training camp? The one who kept shouting my name during the Shiratorizawa game? _That_ Saeko?” His brother’s tone was clipped, but it was more disbelieving than distasteful. Akiteru had learned to take what he could get, with Kei.

“Yes?” he tried. 

Kei looked at him with that ever-so-slight frown for a few beats longer, and then sighed softly through his nose. 

“You have such weird taste.” 

It said something about his relationship with his little brother that Akiteru felt encouraged Kei had substituted ‘weird’ for ‘bad.’ It also didn’t _exactly_ feel like an insult, so he decided not to deny it. He also didn’t bother to ask Kei not to mention this to anyone else yet; that he _knew _wasn’t necessary, whatever else was between them.__

He murmured a quick, somewhat awkward, “Ah, good night, then,” and made to continue down the hall, when the sound of Kei clearing his throat stopped him again. 

“…How did it go?”

Akiteru felt a new, soft flutter kick up under the warmth Saeko had left lingering heavily in his ribcage. He found himself smiling again, and it was as much from the small thread Kei had just tossed him as from the memory of a sweaty, wild-eyed girl’s kiss. 

“Nice. Really nice. I didn’t expect her to be any good because I thought _I_ was teaching _her_ , so she kind of kicked my ass at volleyball.” _And it never felt so good._ “She could probably kick my ass at everything else, too, come to think of it. But I think I kind of… _like_ that.”

Kei gave him a look that said very clearly that that was more than he’d needed to know. “Weird,” he muttered again, shaking his head, but Akiteru thought just maybe there was an implied, answering ‘good night’ somewhere in there too. 

It was enough. He went on to his room, slower than before, humming whatever song had been playing on Kei’s headphones under his breath.

***

Six months later, and some things seemed to never change. 

Akiteru _still_ couldn’t quite manage to pull off a good cross-court spike; his attempt ricocheted off his own brother’s forearm, lost momentum, and fell neatly onto Nishinoya’s wrists on the other side of the net in a laughably easy receive. In the next breath, Sugawara had set the ball to Azumane, who slammed it down for the point.

“My bad!” Akiteru called sheepishly, even though no one on his team looked particularly surprised or upset about it. He was probably lucky this was only a recreational match he was swapping in on, or they might not have let him off so easy. Even Kageyama only gave him a cursory narrow-eyed frown for wasting what had been a perfectly excellent toss. 

His little brother, however, was currently watching him from across the net with a tightness around his eyes and mouth that Akiteru would have been worried was dislike or disgust or something equally painful, except for the fact that Kei quickly averted his gaze every time Akiteru looked back. Which meant it was probably nothing more than embarrassment. In fact, he was pretty much one hundred percent sure it was embarrassment, because—

Well, because other things _had_ changed.

“What’s the matter, babe? You getting distracted by how great my legs look in volleyball shorts again?” 

On the other side of the net, Tanaka Saeko exchanged high fives with Nishinoya before moving into serving position, balancing the ball on the tips of her fingers. 

“You wish, sweetheart!” Akiteru shouted back, almost on reflex, only wincing a little inside at the stifled snickers that scattered across the court. Saeko was grinning at him though, and that was what mattered.

“You’ve gotta try harder than that to get past Kei-kun’s block, you of all people should know that!”

‘Kei-kun’ gave Akiteru a dead-eyed stare from behind his sports goggles. He returned it with a helpless, sheepish smile; despite both of their efforts, Saeko refused to give up using Kei’s first name, insisting that her cheering for him during the Shiratorizawa match had made her feel like ‘an honorary sister already.’ And while Kei had clearly not been pleased (and even less so with Akiteru for not exactly putting up much of a fight), he _had_ seemed at least a little flustered by Saeko’s brash, honest affection. He had also, however, drawn an ironclad line at having his hair ruffled when they saw each other—“Aw c’mon, I do it all the time to Ryuu and Yuu!”—and insisting that Tanaka under no circumstances be allowed to share the privilege. “It’s a slippery slope,” Akiteru remembered Kei muttering darkly when Saeko had laughed and asked him why he was so uptight about it.

“Serve a good one Ane-san!” Nishinoya shouted, shifting his weight from foot to foot in the back line. 

Saeko’s form was as fierce and efficient as ever; she really would have been amazing on the Karasuno girls’ team. And just as they had that first night in this same gym, Akiteru found his eyes tracking her lengthened strides, the way the muscles of her thighs bunched before the short, powerful spring and the quick swing of her arm…

He only had time for a brief flash of startled shock between _hearing_ the smack of her palm on the ball, and _feeling_ the impact when it grazed his jaw, glancing off and bouncing away across the floor.

“Shit, sorry! Nice receive though, babe!” 

Akiteru worked his jaw briefly, touching the hinge of it gingerly, but it was only stinging fiercely, and there was no blood or loose teeth. Just a surface graze. He flashed a quick grin and thumbs-up; everyone looked interested but not overly concerned, since occasionally receiving balls with your face and body seemed to have become almost a normal occurrence in Karasuno. Privately Akiteru would have liked Kei to look a _tiny_ bit more worried for his well-being (he was already moving back into position for the next serve), but he supposed he’d more or less deserved the hit for getting distracted.

He played gamely through the remaining five points (his side lost by three), and then let the tension out of his muscles with a sigh as he watched Saeko’s team thump shoulders and pat each other’s backs in congratulations. He could have sworn he saw Saeko grin pointedly at Kei when she knuckled Ryuu and Nishinoya’s heads affectionately.

He was gulping water from one of the bottles Yachi had darted around handing out to everyone (she had then darted away almost as quickly, sputtering something about finding a first aid kit) when Saeko finally made her way over to his side of the court.

“Ahhh, that felt good.” She stretched her arms above her head expansively, and probably more slowly than was really necessary, but Akiteru knew this game by now, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it. “Pretty cool that we get to play pick-up games with a team that went to nationals whenever we want, huh?” Her eyes gleamed with pride as she accepted Akiteru’s half-drained water bottle, took a few swallows and then dumped a handful of it carelessly over her head. Only he could hear what she was really saying underneath the words. 

_Pretty cool that we have little brothers who helped their team get to nationals, huh?_

The answer to both was a slightly breathless, fervent, “Yeah.”

Saeko cocked one hip up deliberately so she could bump it affectionately against his. She shifted her attention to the scrape on his jaw with a slight curl of a smile, looking apologetic for the injury if not for the wild enthusiasm that had been behind the serve. “Guess it gets kind of rough on you, huh, dating me?” 

Saeko almost always said whatever was on her mind bluntly, straightforwardly. Akiteru couldn’t pretend he didn’t find it comforting in its own way; never having to wonder or worry if she was angry or sad or satisfied, and whether it was from something he had done or not. 

And she wasn’t wrong. Akiteru often thought (and had told her himself, once he had figured out that saying so made her laugh uproariously instead of being offended) that dating Tanaka Saeko should probably come with a hazard label. He hadn’t _thought_ that he was the kind of person who’d risk playing with hazardous things, but one of the other perks of Saeko was that she’d been helping him realize there were parts of himself he hadn’t known existed before.

“Nah, it’s fine.” He touched his tender jaw. Nothing a quick ice wouldn’t fix; he would have felt wrong if he’d escaped the Karasuno gym without at least a few bruises anyway. And he’d definitely have those too, he could feel them already; his jaw was just the most egregious hit he’d taken that game.

He looked at her fondly: short hair sticking to her nape and forehead with sweat and rivulets of water, strip of bare muscled stomach where her tank top was pulled up, eyes bright and burning with leftover energy from competition and exertion, and yeah, legs (and everything else) looking _very_ good in volleyball shorts. 

“I keep telling you, I kinda like dating a girl who can kick my ass.” 

“And _I’m_ very much liking dating a guy who can admit that.” Her small smirk pulling into a full-on grin, Saeko unfolded her arms from where she’d crossed them under her breasts, tugged him down a few inches with a hand curled at the collar of his shirt, and kissed the scraped spot with a gentleness he didn’t often see from her. Then, instead of releasing him right away, she drew him down just a little further and murmured against the shell of his ear, “You’ll have to wait until we get home for me to kiss the other ones better.”

He heard Nishinoya whistle, followed by Tanaka’s (not _entirely_ genuine) groan of despair. And he saw that Kei was now staring at him with an expression of mortified horror that seemed to say Akiteru might have undone weeks of progress gaining his little brother’s respect in just the past couple hours by engaging in such blatant PDA in _his_ gym, in front of his _entire team_. 

And still, Akiteru couldn’t quite help the grin that spread itself across his face. 

It was softer and less predatory than Saeko’s, but it was no less blinding.

**Author's Note:**

> *I'm sorry that this turned out to be more of a ‘first date’ than the original ‘first meeting’ prompt you including, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway! This was an absolute blast to write, and a great opportunity to express my longstanding love for this ship.
> 
> *I find it important to inform you all that at some point during that six-month time skip, they absolutely had that paintball date. Akiteru made the arrangements because he is a smart boy and a sweetheart. Saeko was thrilled. I personally like to imagine they ended up making out on a hay pile or something like Kat and Patrick in _10 Things I Hate About You_ , but feel free to let your imaginations run wild with that.
> 
> *RE: Akisae pet names - I have a headcanon, and it is that while they have a running competition to see who can freak out their brother more with the disgusting gooeyness of their sweet nothings (Akiteru is winning but only because Tanaka is adapting faster than Tsukki), there are also lowkey moments when they casually and unironically call each other ‘babe’ and ‘love’ and mean it.


End file.
